With Patch 5.4, we added a mechanic called "The Crowd Chose You" to Arena gameplay. This mechanic was added to suit two primary goals: keep the game from dragging on too long, and make sure matches always end with one team declared the winner. However, we wanted something that wouldn’t make players feel they needed to change how they played the game. Unfortunately, the implementation of The Crowd Chose You that went live with Patch 5.4 is not filling that last requirement.

So, we’re going to take a different approach. In an upcoming hotfix, we’ll be removing The Crowd Chose You entirely, and replacing it with a new mechanic called Dampening. If a match should last for 10 minutes, all players in the Arena will begin to receive a stacking debuff that reduces healing done by 1% every 10 seconds. This will continue until one team is eventually able to claim the victory. In the extremely unlikely event that neither team has won after 20 minutes, the match will end in a draw.

We feel that this mechanic will have a much smaller impact on playstyle, team composition, and decision making than The Crowd Chose You, and thus result in more fun and exciting matches. We’re currently testing the hotfix internally, and will provide an update when it goes live.

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Update: October 21stGiving a heads up about the upcoming change to replace The Crowd Choose You with Dampening. Testing for the hotfix has completed and it’s currently scheduled to go live after with tomorrow's rolling restarts.

There's a known issue with the tooltip that will be corrected in an upcoming client-side patch. The description should read “Healing effects received reduced by X%”. This applies to all heals and absorbs. It does not affect the healing absorb of Necrotic Strike.

In addition to that, there is a hotfix that's currently undergoing testing (not ready yet) that will cause players picking up a Shadow Sight orb to receive a Faerie Fire effect.

We disagree. Matches with double DPS comps rarely (if ever) last long enough for either The Crowd Chose You or the new Dampening mechanic to even become a factor. It'll take a full 10 minutes before Dampening even begins to stack.

This change isn't targeted specifically at Blood. As I mentioned before, one of our goals with the changes in 5.4 was to avoid heavily influencing player behavior. The Crowd Chose You has a strong affect on Arena gameplay in all brackets, across a wide spectrum of compositions, not just Blood DK in 2v2. We're going to fix Blood (and we're discussing how exactly to do that), but we don't want to balance the entire Arena system around it.

We disagree. Matches with double DPS comps rarely (if ever) last long enough for either The Crowd Chose You or the new Dampening mechanic to even become a factor. It'll take a full 10 minutes before Dampening even begins to stack.

:-\ That's why it favors Double DPS. :-\

I'm not sure I follow. Looking specifically at the 2v2 bracket, matches where either team is running double DPS typically end before the 5 minute mark. They sometimes go longer, but almost never to 10 minutes. The games that do involve Blood DK's, which as I mentioned a few moments ago, we're looking to make additional changes to.

So, under normal circumstances, the only matches that will realistically be affected by this are Healer/DPS vs Healer/DPS, in which case both healers are being affected equally. Matches between double DPS and Healer/DPS or another double DPS team are completely unaffected.

Mortal Strike (and similar effects) are applied multiplicatively. That means they don't become any more (or less) effective as Dampening begins to stack.

Here's a quick, if mathy, example: Say you cast a heal that, unmodified, would heal for 100k. If Mortal Strike is active, that heal is reduced by 25%, for a final amount of 75k (and a loss of 25k healing).

Now, say Dampening is at 10%. Your 100k heal would then land for 90k. Mortal Strike would only affect the remaining 90k healing, putting the final amount healed at 67.5k. The heal was still 25% less effective than it would have been if Mortal Strike wasn't active, but was only reduced by 22.5K -- which, you may notice, is 10% less than the previous example, keeping it in line with the effects of Dampening.

TL;DR: Mortal Strike (and similar effects) are not made any more or less desirable by Dampening.

We're going to take another look at Necrotic Strike's healing absorb and whether or not we feel it should be affected by Dampening. We get that the absorb is the bulk of the ability's "damage", but there is still some concern that it would be too strong. We're also discussing double Rogue.

Quick update: several of you have expressed a concern about stealth teams staying hidden until late in the game, when Dampening starts to stack. This would require them to grab Shadow Sight orbs as much as possible, which would be tricky but is actually possible (particularly with mechanics like Vanish).

We're not totally sure it would be a problem, as it would require quite a bit of skill and more than a little luck to pull off, but we do see the concern and want to avoid promoting that sort of behavior. So, when the Dampening change goes in, we'll also be changing the Shadow Sight debuff to prevent the player who picks up the orb from using stealth mechanics while it's active. That will also include abilities like Vanish or Shadowmeld.

Giving a heads up about the upcoming change to replace The Crowd Choose You with Dampening. Testing for the hotfix has completed and it’s currently scheduled to go live after with tomorrow's rolling restarts.

There's a known issue with the tooltip that will be corrected in an upcoming client-side patch. The description should read “Healing effects received reduced by X%”. This applies to all heals and absorbs. It does not affect the healing absorb of Necrotic Strike.

In addition to that, there is a hotfix that's currently undergoing testing (not ready yet) that will cause players picking up a Shadow Sight orb to receive a Faerie Fire effect.

Ultimately it will be more difficult to heal through necrotic strike with dampening present, just like it will be more difficult to heal through ALL kinds of damage. That is the explicit purpose of the effect, and it will not benefit necrotic strike any more or less than any other attack.

Precisely. After some discussion, we came to the same conclusion. Necrotic Strike's healing absorb is no more or less difficult to heal through than actual damage. You deal with it in the exact same way: by healing the target. To put it another way, Dampening is intended to slowly lower healing output, while the amount of healing needed stays the same. To that end, we think leaving Necrotic Strike unaffected by Dampening is the right call.

I think it's also probably important to note that we're keeping an extremely close eye on how Dampening works out, not only in regard to specific concerns like Necrotic Strike but to its effect on gameplay as a whole. We feel pretty confident that Dampening will do what we'd like it to, but we'll be monitoring it closely until we're sure.